L1 & L2 Token Value Capture - DBA

We covered a lot of ground here, so let’s summarize our key takeaways here:

• Cryptonetworks are not companies. Income/expense/profit metrics generally do not logically apply at this level. We can try to assess the profitability of all token holders, and/or subsets of them.


• PoS issuance to stakers is not a “cost to the network,” and it isn’t even a net

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Bitcoin is the clearest example – BTC holders are willing to accept inflation as a pure expense with no expectation of future income rights. You could also easily imagine Bitcoin having a 1% inflation tail programmed from the start, and perhaps BTC holders would happily hold it. That would happen because BTC holders derive sufficient utility from h... See more

REV is often the best single metric in assessing real demand to use a given network.

There are clearly differences, but they have the same general shape. Let’s take it a step further. What if you wanted stronger pre-confirmations on your rollup (assume this is not a based rollup) rather than a centralized sequencer. Well then you may implement a PoS sequencer set, reintroducing economics that again look even closer to an L1. Or, wh... See more

So far, this post has focused almost exclusively on tokens’ ability to capture value by generating income streams for their holders. They are productive capital assets. This may very well be sufficient to value most tokens in the long-run. Equity-like analysis will do the trick here. Think DCF and DDM.

However, valuing tokens based on cash flows rem... See more

For our purposes here, we will just draw a simple distinction between L1s and L2s:

• L1 – Network relies on its own dedicated operators.


• L2 – Network relies on the operators of another network. It may or may not have its own dedicated operators in addition to these.

In a cryptonetwork, token holders would also be unwilling to supply capital at a loss indefinitely if the token’s only value is derived from its ability to generate profits in the future. However, this gets into the unique properties and value capture mechanisms of crypto – tokens may have value capture outside of their ability to produce income.

PoW assets tend to be more commodity-like relative to PoS assets which tend to be more equity-like. So at times, these PoW metrics will seem a bit silly in the way that calculating the income of holding gold would seem silly. Nobody buys gold or BTC looking for the most productive income-generating asset. Nonetheless, it’s helpful to include both P... See more

It seems obvious that applications, not general-purpose networks, will capture the majority of cash flows generated in these systems over the long-run. This is already playing out. Apps have all of the leverage and pricing power with the end-customer. There’s still a big question though – how much MEV leakage will these apps leave around for the ch... See more